Regardless of how good the leaked version is or isn't, regardless of where it was stored to make it convenient for press to get access to it, regardless of whether or not this illegitimate copy of the game leads to word of mouth sales...the bottom line is someone stole credentials, downloaded a piece of software they didn't have any right to download and then, redistributed it over the internet. All before the game has been released.

That's just flat out illegal. I've never heard of a more black and white case of copyright infringement outside of some kind of Mission Impossible plot where they physically break into the developer's offices using elaborate disguises and make off with a hard drive.

Not every asshat behavior needs to be rationalized away as serving the greater good. Some douchebags are actually criminals and deserve to have the fucking book thrown at them.

I'm really hoping this might one day translate to having to make the painful decision between playing a game on console versus PC moot. I enjoyed playing Mass Effect on the 360. The experience of sitting in my recliner, on the big-screen HDTV, with the sound piped through our home theatre system suited the game's cinematic approach to story very nicely...but it might be nice to play through it again on the PC for the mouse and keyboard controls.

If this means that I could one day buy a game, and then for a nominal cost have it downloadable to the PC as well...that would be awesome.

But there's just no way they'd cater to customers that way.Much like how I'd love to pay a small conversion fee and change my already purchased, boxed copies of PC games into downloadable Steam games.

A bit surprising, seems to have the stink of desperation, I didn't think they were there yet...

It's only surprising if you don't follow any of the recent trends in most MMOs on the market. WoW has been the major exception to everyone else adapting their business model to surprisingly more lucrative sub-free + micro-transaction crap.

You know what...I agree with him. You can't tell me there aren't reviewers who figured out long ago that being critical and venomous is much more entertaining than fair and accurate. That there aren't reviewers who, for whatever reason, have a personal axe to grind against this particular game, Broussard/3DR, Pitchford/Gearbox, or whatever. I've read a couple of reviews that are clearly...clearly...not attempts at fair and accurate reviews.

Why should a publisher or PR firm hand over free preview copies of a game if they're not going to be used to make a fair review.

Make no mistake, this game is no gem. It was way ahead of it's time and then slipped a decade. But it's hardly the worst thing out there, even now. There's a metric fuck-ton of shit on the market and DNF is a solid mediocre at worst.

I'm sure it's real. CoD has somewhere in the ballpark of 15 million players, of which I'd guess 3-5 million are diehard nutheads playing several times a week even now. Half of those registering for a beta, where registering consisted solely of entering your email, seems not unreasonable.

You can believe what you want but again, it comes solely from their PR department who has both every reason to want people to believe its successful and made many ridiculous statements in the past. I don't believe this thing even has that kind of exposure yet to net that many signups. The only way I even see it happening is that people don't know what they are signing up for and believe the service is a beta for game content.

Only logical conclusion is that it's all about making the next quarter or quarter after that look more awesome than it really might be for their current shareholders and stock prices. Especially with all of the negative press that's associated with their recent announcements and Kotick's endless supply of shitty things to say about the people who actually make the damn games.

I can't believe that the people in charge at Activision are incapable of drawing a line between a high number of subscribers and a service that's free right now, but will cost something in the future and not come to the conclussion that there's no way in hell more than a small percentage of those 2 million will actually convert to paying customers.

The Half Elf wrote on Jun 17, 2011, 22:29:Honestly I've rooting for West/Zampella. But either way I hope everything from the case is released to the public.

I'm rooting for them as well, just because I'd rather side with the individual developers over any publisher who thinks of their creative talent as replaceable cogs who should just shut the fuck up and be grateful you haven't been shit-canned yet.

6 months after launch, when the game fails to meet expectations and Origin flops over like the still-born, half-baked service that it will undoubtedly be...you will see this game avaiable on Steam and any other digital distirbution service that EA can find to try and drum up numbers.

Until then, you can order a box copy off Amazon, have it shipped to your door, and avoid the mess alltogether.

Cutter wrote on Jun 16, 2011, 22:10:Way to limit yourself on an already underwhelming response so far. Are they trying to get this thing to fail on purpose?

If you're game, we can probably come up with a way for you to let go of your hate.

Perhaps we can arrange for someone to buy you some beer or at the very least give you a much needed hug. Sound good?

Hey, i know shills/fanboys for Bioware/EA don't like dissenting opinion, but unfortunately for you we're still entitled to them. You'd probably be much happier in a place like the middle-east or China where you don't have to worry about that sort of thing.

Dirwulf wrote on Jun 16, 2011, 11:33:Where are the gaming investigative journalists? They could break the gaming worlds equivalent of Payola wide open.

We're living in a world where the vast majority of our news comes from coroprate owned media outlets, who's primary concern is profits through ratings. Independant journalism has little more weight and reach than an individual's blog.

CommunistHamster wrote on Jun 15, 2011, 05:12:Besides a day or two of downtime for a few games, this "hacking binge" we're in currently will benefit gamers in the future as it will ensure companies properly secure things.

It will also ensure that the government interfere with the internet more than they already do. All of your data will be routed and examined through a government proxy, comrade.

This is just paranoid conspiracy crap. The government has neither the competence, manpower, or bandwidth to police all internet traffic. At best, they can only passively and superficially monitor for very specific types of threats at a limited number of chokepoints on the web. Monitoring for DDoS attacks coming from outside of the US, probably. Monitoring traffic to known resources for illegal activity or terrorism, probably. But your personal data being "examined" by some shadowy government drone...not possible.

CommunistHamster wrote on Jun 15, 2011, 05:12:Besides a day or two of downtime for a few games, this "hacking binge" we're in currently will benefit gamers in the future as it will ensure companies properly secure things.

How exactly does a multiplayer game server make itself 100% secure against DDoS attacks? That's a serious question, btw...not snarky remark. I have a very rudimentary understanding of how DDoS attacks work and it seems impossible to completely prevent them and simultaneously leave yourself open to connectivity to thousands of individuals in the general public.

First, let me say I'm not planning to buy this game. Unless it goes on severely reduced sale and then I might pick up a box purely for the kische value.

However, having watched a number of very long video reviews I have to say that the people playing and reviewing this game are some of the most grumpy, cynical, nit-picky asshats. Clearly, this is not game of the year material, but even from the small sampling of levels and gameplay I've seen it clearly deserves more than 50%. Sure, the gameplay is very old-school, the humor is crass, there's a lot of bad one-liners ripped from movies, but it's Duke Nukem...how could it not be all that?

I don't know what people were expecting, but it really seems like this game is getting blasted because it's the cool thing to do. Cause Broussard is an asshat or something and fuck that guy.

Gamers just seem to have become such jaded, cynical assholes over the past 10 years...and even if something is mind-blowingly amazing (which I'm not saying this game is), half the responses are 'X isn't as good as Y' and the other half are 'meh'. And then two weeks later everyone is complaining about how old and dated it is.

Some people have just not played nearly enough truly shitty games to have any sense of perspective.